Quote

We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.

Werner Heisenberg

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Werner Heisenberg
Age: 74 †
Born: 1901
Born: December 5
Died: 1976
Died: February 1
Academic
Mathematician
Mountaineer
Non-Fiction Writer
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Theoretical Physicist
University Teacher
Kreisfreie Stadt Würzburg
Werner Karl Heisenberg
Heisenberg
Werner K. Heisenberg
Concepts
Accept
Accepting
Democritus
Instead
Symmetry
Philosophy
Elementary
Particles
Abandon
Concept

More quotes by Werner Heisenberg

Image
Can quantum mechanics represent the fact that an electron finds itself approximately in a given place and that it moves approximately with a given velocity, and can we make these approximations so close that they do not cause experimental difficulties?
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The structure underlying the phenomena is not given by material objects like the atoms of Democritus but by the form that determines the material objects. The Ideas are more fundamental than the objects.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The conception of objective reality ... has thus evaporated ... into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Whenever we proceed from the known to the unkown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding'
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Looking at something changes it.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The Same organizing forces that have shaped nature in all her forms are also responsible for the structure of our minds.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be a criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Science clears the fields on which technology can build.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The violent reaction on the recent development of modern physics can only be understood when one realises that here the foundations of physics have started moving and that this motion has caused the feeling that the ground would be cut from science
Werner Heisenberg
Image
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
The basic idea is to shove all fundamental difficulties onto the neutron and to do quantum mechanics in the nucleus.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
In my paper the fact the XY was not equal to YX was very disagreeable to me. I felt this was the only point of difficulty in the whole scheme...and I was not able to solve it.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Nature is made in such a way as to be able to be understood. Or perhaps I should put it-more correctly-the other way around, and say that we are made in such a way as to be able to understand Nature.
Werner Heisenberg
Image
Only a few know, how much one must know to know how little one knows.
Werner Heisenberg